Mekanizmalar.com is one of the websites I would recommend for automata makers. I am working on a new automaton and animations here help me a lot to plan the mechanism. There are videos of different mechanisms. On some of the pages, there are flash animations where you can change the values and see the result immediately.
Sample Mechanisms:
Here I am attaching two screenshots from the website:
For more you can visit mekanizmalar.com..